Comment on Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It
Chulk@lemmy.ml 5 days agoGiven that it says the phone was a Google Pixel, I’m guessing it was GrapheneOS and the activist entered their duress PIN before handing over the phone.
If he’s a US citizen, he’s better off refusing to enter any PIN. That’s protected by the 5th amendment.
If not a citizen and this was in a port of entry context, then he would still have the 5th amendment protection. But customs can simply choose to refuse entry on discretion. So that’s a potentially serious consequence.
At least on an iPhone, if the device has been unlocked since powering on, then forensic tools such as Cellebrite’s can extract information from the phone. The absolute safest bet is to perform a wipe. If this person is an activist then he’s an easy target and likely knew to be prepared for such an interrogation with our current fascist administration.
GrapheneOS has a feature which automatically restarts the phone if it hasn’t been interacted with after some user-configurable delay. For example, you could configure the phone to automatically reboot if it hasn’t been used for an hour. This way, even if my phone is seized, that reboot timer is ticking. Once it reboots, the encryption on the phone is basically unbreakable.
The absolute safest bet is to perform a wipe.
This may be effective at preventing the government from accessing the data. But as we see, the law, including the 5th amendment, doesn’t protect from legal exposure to obstruction-type charges. Or lying to the cops type charges if you say you’ll unlock the phone, but then you actually wipe the phone.
Sure, but nothing protects you from Fascists if they want to go after you. There’s so many laws that are malleable enough that they can always come up with some excuse. You should be legally protected for doing what this person did, but they’ll still try. We’ll see if their bullshit holds up in court I guess.
It depends on port of entry. The ninth circuit, which covers San Francisco, has upheld that non-citizen entrants can refuse to provide a phone pin, but other circuits have found differently.
So odd that this happened in California because there’s a pretty powerful set of protections in place in the ninth circuit specifically - not that the current admin gives a shit about the law.
This was in Atlanta, Georgia, unless you’re referring to a different incident than what’s in the OP
The second paragraph discusses an incident that occurred at San Francisco International Airport with the same circumstance. Should have indicated that’s what I found weird because it should have been prevented. The southern courts have been less protective of individual freedoms. Might be legal there under the border exemption according to their courts.
It should be noted for the record, if you ever have to use your duress code, do it before you hand the device over, don’t offer it up to them, and SHUT THE FUCK UP.
If you have time, turn the phone back on and you’ll get a “recovery” screen asking to do a factory reset. Select this and let it boot back to the setup screen then turn it off again. It’s now in a state where, if you remembered to shut the fuck up, they’ll have a much harder time proving that you destroyed evidence and didn’t just hand over a device you hadn’t setup yet, as is a somewhat common (good) practice with border crossings.
As with all things you may have to depend on, ideally you should test this flow. Carefully make a backup, verify the backup integrity, then use the duress pin ensuring that everything works the way you expected.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Then they should have to explain understand what law or suspected crime he was detained and his phone was taken as evidence.
Because otherwise they can’t prove he deleted evidence of a suspected crime. So what is the suspected crime?
Chulk@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Agreed